Meliboeus decides the contest in favour of Corydon:—
Haec memini, et victum frustra contendere Thyrsin.
Ex illo Corydon Corydon est tempore nobis[208].
These poems, in which the conventional shepherds of pastoral poetry sing of their loves, their flocks and herds, of the beauty of the seasons and of outward nature, in tones caught from Theocritus, or revive and give a new meaning to the old Sicilian dirge over ‘the woes of Daphnis,’ may be assigned to the eventful year in which the forces of the Republic finally shattered themselves against the forces of the new Empire. There is a strange contrast between these peaceful and somewhat unreal strains of Virgil and the drama which was at the same time enacted on the real stage of human affairs. No sound of the ‘storms that raged outside his happy ground’ disturbs the security with which Virgil cultivates his art. But the following year brought the trouble and unhappiness of the times home to the peaceful dwellers around Mantua, and to Virgil among the rest. Of the misery caused by the confiscations and allotments of land to the soldiers of Octavianus, the first Eclogue is a lasting record. Yet even in this poem, based as it is on genuine feeling and a real experience, Virgil seems to care only for the truth of feeling [pg 140]with which Tityrus and Meliboeus express themselves, without regard for consistency in the conception of the situation, the scenery, or the personages of the poem. Tityrus is at once the slave who goes to Rome to purchase his freedom, and the owner of the land and of the flocks and herds belonging to it[209]. He is advanced in years[210], and at the same time a poet lying indolently in the shade, and making the woods ring with the sounds of ‘beautiful Amaryllis[211],’ like the young shepherds in Theocritus. The scenery apparently combines some actual features of the farm in the Mantuan district—
Quamvis lapis omnia nudus
Limosoque palus obducat pascua iunco[212],
with the ideal mountain-land of pastoral song—
Maioresque cadunt altis de montibus umbrae[213].
A further inconsistency has been suggested between the time of year indicated by the ‘shade of the spreading beech’ in the first line, and that indicated by the ripe chestnuts at line 81[214]. The truth of the poem consists in the expression of the feelings of love which the old possessors entertained for their homes, and the sense of dismay caused by this barbarous irruption on their ancient domains:—
Impius haec tam culta novalia miles habebit?